by Trevor Hoyle
Queghan folded the print-out into the shape of a delta wing and sent it sailing across the room towards the angled window.
*
It was disconcerting never knowing which wife you were going home to; Queghan was duly disconcerted. This time it was the harridan.
He stepped through the front door and found himself in a hot steamy kitchen with a black-leaded range taking up the whole of one wall and an oval metal bath set before it filled with boiling water. A huge dented kettle throbbed on the cast iron hob, burbling to itself and spouting steam.
Just as his eyes were becoming accustomed to this gloomy domestic scene a hag of a woman entered the room, seeming not to notice him, and with a mumbled curse took the kettle from the hob and poured boiling water into the bath. Steam rose in clouds, enveloping her head, so that wisps of hair clung damply to her shiny forehead and sweat ran down the hollows of her scrawny neck. Her shoulders stuck out like those of a scarecrow, the drab material of her dress hanging slackly across her thin back and concave chest. She straightened up wearily and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, catching sight of him and peering through the rising steam.
‘Is that you, Paul?’
‘No, this isn’t Paul. It’s Chris.’
‘Chris?’ she said. ‘Chris?’ She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. ‘Where’s our Paul?’
Queghan didn’t want to break the spell (it would only have upset her), so he replied that Paul hadn’t come home from work. He wasn’t entirely sure which period this was supposed to be, though by the look of the kitchen he surmised that it was Nineteenth-Century Working Class – possibly a mining community judging by the waiting bath.
‘I suppose you’ve come to see Paul,’ the hag said. ‘You might as well sit yourself down.’
Queghan edged past the sideboard and sat down in a rocking chair whose stiff rusting springs clanged alarmingly. The period detail was good, he noted, right down to the flagstone floor and the mouse holes in the warped skirting. Now that he was included in the scenario he might as well play the part. But he wondered who Paul could be.
‘Would you like some tea?’ The woman had adopted a pose, the sticks of her wrists bent backwards resting on her hips, her shrewd eyes observing him keenly. There was a purple mole on her chin with a single stiff bristle growing from it.
‘Yes. Thank you.’ He decided to reinforce the image. It would be amusing and maybe even educational. ‘Where’s Paul working these days?’
‘Nottingham,’ the woman said tersely, taking a pot-bellied earthenware teapot from on top of the range and pouring a thick dark-brown liquid into a mug. It looked like tea. ‘Bit strong,’ the woman said. ‘I mashed it ten minutes ago.’
Queghan hid a smile. Good choice of phrase. Authentic dialogue. She had researched this one well. ‘What’s Paul doing there?’ He refrained from using dialect; the woman would have to accept him as an educated outsider.
‘Got himself a job in an office. His father’ (she pronounced it ‘fae-ther’) ‘wanted him to start down’t pit but I put me foot down and said no. It might have been good enough for th’owd feller but it’s not good enough for my Paul.’ She placed the mug on the corner of the table, a dull spoon sticking out of it.
Queghan was watching her. He said curiously, ‘Your husband works in the pit?’
‘Aye, that’s reet,’ the woman said, sitting down in a straight-back chair and resting her elbows on the red and green squared oilcloth. She rubbed her eyes with prominent whitish knuckles. ‘Bin down’t pit these twenty-odd year. Nowt better for him, never was, though there might have been once, as a young feller. Didn’t take his chances. Too fond of his ale, Walter is – allus has been. Were a fine upstanding chap one time, could have charmed the birds off the trees, but it’s all gone now. But I’ve got my Paul, he shan’t ruin him, I’ll see to that.’ Quite unexpectedly she started to cry. Her eyes appeared to be dry and yet the tears ran down and plopped on the oilcloth. She sniffled into a rag of a handkerchief and said, ‘Good heavens, drink your tea now, pay no attention to me.’
Queghan was embarrassed to be near such emotion, even though he knew it to be fabricated in the same way as the flagstone floor, the mouse holes, the creaking rocking chair, the thin bleached knuckles …
And something else was troubling him. The scene had the nagging familiarity of a half-remembered dream, of something experienced long ago, or depicted on the screen, or read about. Of course he had seen details of the period before – the frugal surroundings, the hardships, the raw nerve of living on the poverty line – yet somehow she had caught not merely a similitude of the environment and the conditions but a specific human situation at a certain time and place.
This wasn’t, Queghan felt, the enactment of just another historical reconstruction, an amusing diversion: it was nearer to the nub of things, closer to some underlying truth than a clever replication of period detail.
He said, ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure that what you’re doing is for the best. Your husband will understand.’
The woman blew her nose and sniffed her tears away. She smiled at him. ‘What must you think of me, weeping in front of a stranger? You mustn’t mention this to Paul, he’d be angry with me. He says tears should only be used for happiness, not for sorrow.’
‘You love your son very much,’ Queghan said.
‘I live for him,’ the woman said simply. ‘He is my life.’
‘He’s very fortunate to have someone like you.’
The woman tossed her head and laughed, a little harshly. ‘You try telling him that. He thinks I interfere too much in his affairs. He’s very stubborn. I say, “You don’t have the experience, you’re very young, Paul”, but he thinks he knows best. The girl at the farm, she’s turned his head, filled him up with ideas. But whenever I warn him he says, “I can look after myself, mother. No girl will ever come between us. I watch them. I see their little snares and wiles; they won’t trap me. Never.” But he’s so young, he doesn’t know about life. He doesn’t understand women.’
‘And what about the one in Nottingham?’ Queghan said.
The woman reacted sharply. Her hands went together and clasped themselves in a knot on the oilcloth, the pale bones showing. ‘Who told you about her?’ Her brows were drawn into fierce, rigid lines. ‘Is it common knowledge?’
‘Rumour,’ Queghan admitted cautiously. ‘People talk, and something like that is bound to get around. A married woman and a younger man.’
‘They do talk,’ the woman said, barely controlling herself. ‘That’s all some of them can do, talk.’ She closed her eyes wearily and shook her head from side to side. ‘I’ve warned him, begged him to be more careful.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him directly. ‘Of course it’s her that’s to blame. These women nowadays, these so-called modern women, they have no shame. They’re nothing more than brazen …’ She fumbled for a word to express her meaning without offending him. ‘Trollops.’
‘It’s the times,’ Queghan said placatingly.
‘Aye, the times,’ the woman agreed sourly. ‘The times change but folk remain the same. One of these days he’ll learn. One of these days—’ She held up a scrawny hand. ‘Hush!’
Queghan heard nothing.
‘Sit quiet,’ the woman said, getting up herself. ‘It’s Morel. He’s been in the pub swilling himself stupid with ale as usual. Sit quiet and he’ll pay you no mind.’ She stood at the table, listening intently to the perfect silence, and suddenly her hand went up and clutched the faded dress above her heart. Her face was ashen.
‘Are you ill?’ Queghan said, anxious despite himself.
She shook her head, unable to speak for the moment. Then she moistened her pale lips; her gaze steadied and sought him out. ‘I’m all right,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t say anything. I’m all right.’
‘You ought to see a doctor.’
‘Doctors.’ The woman tried a smile but it was twisted and full of pain. ‘Wouldn’t give ’em house roo
m. Quacks most of them. Keep you ill so’s they can take your money. That’s the only thing we agree on, Morel and me.’ Once again she fell silent and her eyes seemed to withdraw as if observing an inner landscape: a private fantasy world locked inside her head.
She stood at the table, her hands suspended in mid-gesture, as still and unyielding as a waxwork. Queghan got up and left the kitchen; she didn’t see him go even though he crossed her eye-line and passed by close enough to touch.
Something that Karve always said came to him now: ‘Ignore a coincidence at your peril,’ and Queghan now had two separate events to contend with within the space of a few hours. Something somewhere was juggling with the incidence of probability, manipulating spacetime and causing it to distort.
These ‘coincidences’ were the peaks of waves which his senses could detect but not so far comprehend. And the odd thing was that they were in some way connected with his search for the mysterious psi particles which constituted the basic stuff of time and matter.
The quarks were coming home to roost.
*
At dinner he asked his wife why she had chosen a scene from Sons and Lovers and she looked at him blankly for a moment and then shook her head. She was wearing an emerald-green velvet evening gown, gathered and held at her breast by a gold pin, her shoulders bare and gently contoured in the lamplight, soft dark recesses nestling above her collar-bones. The fine curve of her neck was emphasized by the smooth blond hair swept back above her ears which gleamed like old silver in the mellow light.
Queghan suggested to her that there must have been a reason. ‘Was it specified as an educational project?’
‘I didn’t intend making it a fictional scene,’ Oria said. ‘It was simply an accurate historical reconstruction.’ Her eyes shifted momentarily and became vague. For some time she had been unwell.
‘I couldn’t fault its accuracy – I could even smell the coal dust. But you introduced fictional characters, Paul, Morel, the Nottingham woman.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Oria said. Her delicate hands moved like slender pale fish in the lamplight. ‘All I had in mind was to capture authentic period detail. The characters must have imposed themselves … I don’t know how or why.’
Queghan drank some wine. He smiled and said, ‘I wish you’d warned me. Finding your wife made up as a hag isn’t the best sort of homecoming.’
‘I lost track of time. I’m sorry, Chris. And I didn’t expect you for at least another hour.’ She smiled uncertainly. ‘I shouldn’t keep doing this, I know.’
‘A harmless fantasy never hurt anybody.’
Oria nodded. She wasn’t entirely certain that any fantasy was totally harmless. Later in the evening they listened to classical tribal music. Oria was restless and she became annoyed with Queghan because he didn’t respond to her attempts to make conversation. In a way she didn’t understand, this rather pleased her, though she still put on a show of irritation – the truth being that it pleased her when his mind drifted away in abstract speculation, excluding her and everything else; it was a trait which endeared him to her even as her feminine pride was snubbed. Had he always been attentive she wouldn’t have loved him so much.
‘But I do,’ Queghan said, smiling faintly. ‘I do listen to you.’
‘Perhaps if I took a lover you might be more considerate.’
‘Which period did you have in mind? English Regency? Greek Bacchanalia? Maybe something modern, post-Colonization?’
‘I didn’t mean a reconstruction,’ Oria said tartly. ‘I meant live-action experience. You remember – real life?’
‘That’s the stuff between the scenes?’
‘Why did I marry you?’ Oria said. ‘You come back from the nether world like a whale surfacing for a breath of air. Then down again into the deep.’
‘You’ve never seen a whale.’
‘My grannie told me all about them.’
‘Your grannie never saw a whale. We don’t have whales. They forgot to bring the embryos. We have blowfish instead, the size of office blocks.’
‘What have blowfish the size of office blocks to do with my taking a lover?’
‘You could take a blowfish for a lover.’
‘That’s an obscene suggestion, not to say physically awkward and cumbersome in bed.’
‘Could be a lot of fun.’
‘Who for?’
‘The blowfish.’
Oria leaned closer. The demarcation between green velvet and white breast was very evident. She said:
‘Let’s try another ploy. Blowfish aren’t sexy.’
‘They are to other blowfish.’
Oria started giggling. ‘Stop it, Chris.’ She reached out and stroked his cheek.
‘Which ploy is this?’ Queghan asked, giving her a sidelong look. But it had been too near the truth to be comfortable and Oria snatched her hand away. She was very beautiful, still desirable, and it was a pity they had to play at games to touch reality. It was necessary to simulate the correct responses.
How long since a human being had responded spontaneously and involuntarily to stimuli? There had been an overkill of emotion and the human species had grown weary, like an actor forced to play a role until it became a mumbled ritual, empty of meaning, devoid of feeling.
Now Oria had taken on her affronted virgin pose. She had offered herself and been rejected: the young and tender innocent spurned and cast aside. The trouble with the image was that she was thirty-nine years old and had a son of seventeen.
Queghan said, ‘I’m too tired to play. Let’s go to bed.’
She looked warily at him and said, ‘I’m tired as well.’
‘Really tired?’
‘Actually tired.’
‘I think we’ve established that we’re both tired,’ and he smiled into her grey-green eyes. Behind those eyes there was a universe he knew nothing about. He supposed that in some ways it corresponded to his own, that there were certain points of similarity. But to know for sure he would have to enter her mind, and so far he had only succeeded in penetrating her body.
Queghan bent forward to kiss her, wondering what he ought to feel and what his response should be.
2
RECONPAN
Johann Karve had spent a restless night. As a rule he slept soundly, untroubled by whatever cares the day had heaped upon his ageing shoulders; but the latest results from the CENTiNEL Particle Accelerator had been more than merely disturbing, they had been alarming.
He sat at his desk on Level 40 of MyTT drinking lukewarm tea from a china cup, turning the pages of research data: column after column of nine-digit numbers which varied only by the last two, in some cases the last three, decimal places. These were the reassuring ones. But here and there amongst the endless rows of grey figures a red asterisk shrilled a warning like a beacon on a foggy night. His first and natural conclusion, after observing these maverick numbers, had been ‘cyberthetic malfunction’. It was the obvious explanation, the calming shot which numbed the shock to the sensory nerve system and intellectual processes. Or failing that explanation (and it had died a miserable death on reading the addendum to the report which stated that the data had been independently verified) one could always suppose that the Particle Accelerator itself had detected a freak interaction of mu-meson particles in the region of the Temporal Flux Centre 2U0525-06. After all, it was an unusual region of spacetime where time dilation was at optimum.
Yet even this would not do. As Director of the Myth Technology Research Institute he had to rely on the expertise of hardline scientists, but he was not such a fool that he couldn’t read a particle accelerator report and interpret the findings in a meaningful fashion. The decay rate of mu-mesons was precisely calibrated: cyberthetic analysis had already allowed for the fact that they lived seven times longer than was theoretically possible. Created by the collision between energetic protons emanating from super-nova explosions elsewhere in the galaxy, their very high speeds – a fraction below lightspeed – enabled t
hem to age slower than other particles in the same spatio-temporal co-ordinate.
And not only were the mu-mesons behaving strangely. The really worrying aspect was that a whole range of elementary psi particles, companions of the neutron and proton, denoted Σ, Λ, Ξ and so on, had suddenly taken it into their heads to alter their rates of decay. If time dilation wasn’t the culprit this left only one possibility, but it was the one Karve was reluctant to accept.
In simple terms it meant that the fabric of spacetime was disintegrating.
The atomic structure of elementary particles, which constituted the stuff of energy and matter, was behaving erratically and breaking all the rules of physics. The figures in front of him were evidence of this – these ordered grey columns which foretold that organic structure, and time itself, were breaking down. There would be no cataclysmic explosion, no supra-galactic event to signal the end of time – merely the creeping infinitesimal process of disintegration and decay.
And how would this process announce itself? Karve picked up the china cup and supported it lightly by the outspread tips of his fingers. Inside this ‘dead’ piece of matter a thousand billion billion particles were busily humming away in their orbits: atoms within molecules; electrons, protons and neutrons within atoms; and within these sub-atomic particles the infinitely smaller constituent parts which were the wave-forms of pure energy. Nothing very dramatic was required to make this whole elaborate structure crumble into nothingness, to dissipate itself in a burst of radiation. True, the amount of radiation generated would be enough to devastate an area several kilometres square, but essentially the atomic structure would simply have to break the rules and stop behaving as it had done since the formation of the primeval atom all those thousands of millions of years ago.
